Poll puts David Cunliffe in front

Q+A Colmar Brunton poll puts David Cunliffe in
front in Labour leadership raceA Colmar Brunton snap poll on TV One’s Q+A
programme shows David Cunliffe to be the early favourite for
the leadership of the Labour Party.

The telephone
poll of 517 people conducted on Friday and Saturday asked
“Regardless of whether you support the Labour Party, which
of the following MPs do you think would do the best job
leading Labour into the next general election? Grant
Robertson, David Cunliffe, Andrew Little, Jacinda Ardern, or
Shane Jones.”

Mr Cunliffe was the clear favourite
on 29 per cent, followed by Ms Ardern on 15 per cent, Mr
Jones on 11 per cent, Mr Robertson on 10 per cent and Mr
Little on 9 per cent. Both Ms Ardern and Mr Little have
ruled themselves out of contention. The other three MPs have
not yet announced if they will run for the Labour
leadership.

Speaking on Q+A, Labour party president
Moira Coatsworth says with David Shearer having stepped down
last Thursday, it’s too early for the public to have a
clear view on who should be leader.“I don’t think
people will have given this much attention so far. So
let’s wait and see when we know who the candidates are and
they’re really up and campaigning,” Ms Coatsworth
says.If two or more MPs put themselves forward for
nomination, then the Labour Party’s new electoral process
gets triggered, meaning that instead of caucus electing a
new leader, it will only get a 40 per cent say in the
process, party members will also get 40 per cent and the
unions 20 per cent of the vote. The election will use a
single round preferential voting system where members rank
their preferred candidates.

Ms Coatsworth’s
preference is for a leadership contest rather than caucus
choosing the leader. However, the deputy leader will still
be elected by caucus.

Nominations for the Labour
leadership close at 10pm on Monday, August 26, with a list
of nominees announced on Tuesday.

CORIN
What do you make of these results [snap poll of who
should lead the Labour Party]? Does this suggest to you that
we will have a contest on our hands?

MOIRA
Well, we’re unclear at this stage whether we’ll
have a contest. I think it’s pretty early to be looking at
results. We haven’t heard who the candidates are, we
haven’t heard them speak about what they’re standing
for, and we haven’t actually seen them campaigning.

MOIRA
Yeah, look, I mean, I work outside the beltway, and
I think it’s pretty hard out there, and I don’t think
people will have given this much attention so far. So
let’s wait and see when we know who the candidates are and
they’re really up and campaigning.

CORIN
Is this unchartered territory for Labour? We
haven’t had a primary election like this, really. ACT did
one, but not on this scale.

MOIRA
Mm. It’s the first time for us in NZ. It’s
actually the first time for a major party in Australasia, so
people are really getting excited about it. But it’s not
unchartered territory at all internationally. It’s pretty
usual practice internationally in progressive parties.

CORIN Is there a risk,
though, that this is going to expose divisions that are
within that Labour Party at the moment, that these are going
to be laid bare for the public in a three-week roadshow,
effectively?

MOIRA I
don’t think so. I think people are so committed to the
need for a change of government and to pick the right leader
that I think people will engage really actively in it, and
then that person will have a mandate, and people will get in
behind the new leader and go for it.

CORIN
Because there is a feeling around Parliament,
certainly, that there is a divide between the caucus MPs who
have now lost their ability to elect their leader,
effectively, and the party, which has been demanding more
say. There seems to be some tension there. You don’t think
that’s going to be exposed now?

MOIRA
I don’t think so at all. I think, as I said, that
people want to choose the right leader and actually get in
and campaign. And, actually, caucus haven’t lost the
right. What they’ve actually got is probably a greater say
than other countries that do it. We’ve left caucus with 40
per cent of the say, so that’s taking account of the fact
that there’s a pretty important relationship between the
new leader and caucus.

CORIN
Are we going to get a real contest here, though?
Because you’ve put in place a code of conduct, I
understand, which will effectively put some rules on these
MPs. Are they going to really be able to speak their mind
and take each other on and really get in some rough and
tumble?

MOIRA Yeah, on
the issues. I think if you look at any campaign, there’s
campaign guidelines that cover some basic things so that you
run a campaign ethically. That’s what that will cover, but
we’re anticipating and looking forward to robust
debate.

CORIN Because
you can imagine, I mean, David Cunliffe, for example, has
had a couple of cracks at the leadership already. You can
imagine that that caused some rifts, that those sort of
things might come out in the campaign. Is that the type of
thing that’s fair game?

MOIRA
I think that people will be wanting to campaign on
the issues, and I think what party members will be looking
for is the kind of qualities that they want to see in a
leader. So have they got Labour values, have they got
leadership potential, can they communicate, are they really
going to go hard and implement the kind of transformative
policies we have?

CORIN
Is that what they really want? Or do they want
someone that can win, that can beat John Key?

MOIRA Yeah, it needs to be a
person who can win. Absolutely.

CORIN
But is that necessarily, at this time in Labour’s
life, the right person?

MOIRA
Well, I trust the maturity of that group of people
to have a really good think, and it’s all going to be out
there for a democratic process, and people are pretty
pleased about that.

CORIN
Well, that’s interesting, because the message
coming from the unions is that they very much want whoever
the person is who can win the next election and beat John
Key.

MOIRA Yeah,
absolutely. Absolutely. Everybody wants that, yeah.

CORIN Are you worried that
people are going to think, and they already are thinking,
that this is going to be a contest decided by the
unions?

MOIRA Um, yeah,
I’m a bit puzzled at that. In the UK, that’s the
narrative, but in the UK, the caucus get the same vote as
the unions. And the way that we’ve done it, as I said,
caucus get 40 per cent, party members who are individuals or
family members get 40 per cent, and, you know, party members
who are the working people of NZ - the tanker driver, the
aged care worker, who are also legitimate members - they get
20 per cent. So I would have thought that, actually, the
most privileged in this are caucus.

CORIN
Yeah, but, you know, the way it’s potentially
shaping up is that some would argue Grant Robertson has a
strong support base in caucus. David Cunliffe has a bigger
support base in the party. They cancel each other out, and
then you’re left with the unions that could decide it.

MOIRA Well, I think
everybody’s got a say, and it all gets put together into
one single total, and that will be the decision.

CORIN You must be worried,
though, because Tim Barnett did say there will be
restrictions on block voting for the unions. Can you
explain?

MOIRA Yeah, no,
I’m not worried at all. We have, right from-

CORIN But that suggests the
party is a little bit concerned.

MOIRA
No, no. I mean, what we want is the principles of
this, one of them is democratic integrity, and so we’re
wanting it to go as broadly as it can. Some unions have
chosen to take that right out to individual members, and
some unions have taken it out as far as their national
conference delegates, which is, again, international
practice. So I’m not worried at all. I’m excited by
it.

CORIN But how do you
stop unions block voting? Because that is what Tim Barnett
said.

MOIRA How do you
stop them block voting? Well, the things they’re saying
they’re doing, as I said, the Service Workers (union) are
inviting their individual members to come to all the
meetings and vote at the meetings. The others have got their
national conference delegates. It’s a postal ballot. It
will be sent out by the company who’s doing it for us.
They’ll get the vote individually. It’s a secret ballot,
and it will go back to them, and we’ll get the results.
So…

CORIN Will you
come out and back anybody?

MOIRA
No. I’m the president. I’m going to trust in
the judgement of everybody, and I’ll work with that new
leader.

CORIN What about
MPs? Do you have a problem with them endorsing potential
candidates?

MOIRA No. The
people that we expect neutrality from are from myself and
Tim, and we’ve got what’s called a leadership advisory
group overseeing the process so that other people like the
NZ Council can participate in this as vigorously as they’d
like to. So it’s a small group of people who are expected
to maintain that neutrality.

CORIN
And when we see this roadshow, we won’t see a
ticket, will we? We won’t see a leader and deputy go out,
will we?

MOIRA No. The
deputy leader is still elected by caucus, so this is a
straight leadership.

CORIN
Would you expect potential candidates, though, to
perhaps anoint a deputy early on, or does that have to
wait?

MOIRA Caucus decide
on the deputy leader, so that’s a matter for caucus to
decide, yeah.

CORIN And
do you believe at the end of this process that you can come
out with a unified party?

MOIRA
Absolutely, and I think that the international
experience is that people who participate in leadership
selections have some skin in the game and they participate
more. So I think anything that increases the strength of
democracy in NZ’s a really good thing, yeah.

CORIN Moira Coatsworth,
Labour Party President, thank you very much for your
time.

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